EXCLUSIVE: Manatee school staffer kept job after sex with student

Friday

Oct 11, 2013 at 12:01 AM

Leverna Williams worked at Bayshore High for more than a year as district officials abandoned concerns he had impregnated the girl.

By CHRIS ANDERSON and KATY BERGEN

A 44-year-old Bayshore High School employee, who started having sex with a student when she was 16, continued to work at the school for more than a year as several high-ranking district officials abandoned concerns that he had impregnated her.

Leverna Williams, a cafeteria manager at Bayshore, resigned from his position on Sept. 19 after admitting to a district investigator that he had indeed fathered the child of a former student, Shakura Ogletree.

District investigative reports show that two of five employees set to be fired for their mishandling of a similar misconduct investigation at Manatee High were made aware of concerns voiced by Ogletree's mother, Lakeshia, in a July 10, 2012 phone call, but the scope of their response was narrow and almost nonexistent.

At that time, Lakeshia Ogletree told the school district's legal department that she believed Williams was the father of her daughter's child, and offered his place of employment and her contact number.

Former district investigator Debra Horne, who says she was acting on advice from a superior, responded by conducting a four-question interview the next day with Shakura Ogletree, who denied Williams was the father and hung up.

The matter was dropped.

Williams and Lakeshia Ogletree were never interviewed by Horne. An official investigation never took place and a case file was never opened.

A more thorough investigation in July 2012 would have revealed that Williams and Shakura Ogletree were having sex in motels when he was 40 and she was 16, as determined recently by new district investigator Troy Pumphrey.

“It's a sad situation and it tells you how our school system really is,” Lakeshia Ogletree told the Herald-Tribune.

No action

School emails show that Horne, former assistant superintendent Scott Martin and retired school attorney John Bowen were apprised of Lakeshia Ogletree's call in July 2012.

Lakeshia Ogletree said she received a brief call from the district and was informed no action could be taken because her daughter was 18 when she became pregnant.

“All I know is it was a guy, and he said he was an attorney for the School Board, and he said she was 18 and there was nothing they could do and he hung up,” Lakeshia Ogletree said.

“But the responsibility still relies on the school district because she was still in school and there is no employee who should be messing with a student regardless.”

The lack of a proper investigation meant Williams spent the past year in his job at Bayshore High.

Sheriff's Office spokesman Dave Bristow confirmed Thursday that the case has been sent to the state, and a felony charge of unlawful sexual activity with a minor was recommended for Williams.

When asked why she did not contact police in addition to the school district, Lakeshia Ogletree said she believed the district would handle the situation thoroughly.

“I entrusted them for her safety and to make sure situations like that don't happen, but, hey, it happened,” Lakeshia Ogletree said.

The case is the second high-profile investigation by the district that involves charges of an employee having inappropriate relationships with students.

This year, four school administrators, including Horne, have been charged with felony counts of failure to report child abuse for not calling law enforcement or the state when they were made aware of allegations of misconduct against former Manatee High football coach Rod Frazier.

Frazier has been charged with seven counts of battery in the unwanted touching of Manatee High students and staff, as well as three counts of interfering with a student's attendance.

Horne, as well as Assistant Superintendent Bob Gagnon and former Manatee High assistant principals Gregg Faller and Matthew Kane, has been charged with failure to report. Gagnon, Faller and Kane are also charged with lying to police.

Though criminal charges have not been leveled at Martin, he and the four other administrators have been recommended for termination by the district for ineffectively investigating the Frazier matter and ignoring complaints.

Relationship

The relationship between Williams and Shakura Ogletree was born in the shadows, and actually unbeknownst to the 15-year-old girl.

She told an investigator that Williams admitted to trying to determine where she lived as he perused her neighborhood in his Jaguar, watching her walk home.

Shakura Ogletree eventually noticed the silver car that used to follow her around, and she would meet the driver when she started her sophomore year at Bayshore.

Williams was a friendly cafeteria manager who Shakura said flirted often with seniors.

A flirtation began between the two, and Shakura enjoyed it. She was 16, and told a school investigator that she was “intrigued” by Williams' advances. She later told the Herald-Tribune that she lied about her age to Williams.

She used an assignment to write a profile on Williams for the school newspaper as an excuse to spend time in his office, where he would rub her arms.

They did not kiss on school property, she told Pumphrey, the district investigator. But they kept in close contact. Williams slipped her a package with $400 to buy a cellphone so they could communicate, she said. Williams told her to keep what they were “building” private.

By the middle of her sophomore year, Ogletree, 16, and Williams, 40, were in a sexual relationship, she told Pumphrey.

They met at a park by Lee Middle School in Bradenton and drove together in his Jaguar to hotels in both Sarasota and Manatee counties, like the Super 8 on Tamiami Trail, Lakeshia Ogletree said.

A school fight her junior year prompted Shakura to leave Bayshore High School and she lost contact with Williams while living in Orlando for several months. When she moved back to Manatee, she started school at Southeast High School, and once again contacted Williams.

Williams has stated in district reports that he cannot provide a firm time line about when he started having sex with Ogletree, but he has said that he believed Ogletree to be 18, and that they started having sex after she withdrew from school.

Reached Thursday, Shakura Ogletree said she had confused the dates and times of when she and Williams first had intercourse. Though she acknowledged that she told investigators that she was 16 when she became intimate with Williams, she said Thursday she was 18 and had withdrawn from school.

She said she was not “in the right state of mind” during interviews because her daughter was ill.

“It was a total misunderstanding,” Shakura Ogletree said Thursday. “I'm not saying we didn't have a relationship, but we were never in real physical contact until I left the school.”

What is undisputed is this: In October 2011 Shakura Ogletree turned 18. By February 2012, the Southeast High transfer student was pregnant with Williams' child. The child was born this past November.

Narrow response

Sometime in spring 2012 — the exact time is not clear — Lakeshia Ogletree told an investigator that she called and left messages for Bayshore High principal David Underhill and an official at Southeast High, the name of whom she could not remember.

Lakeshia Ogletree said she voiced her concern with both schools that her daughter was pregnant by Williams and left her contact number.

Williams had been picking up Shakura Ogletree from school while she was briefly a student at Southeast.

Pumphrey, in his report, said he interviewed Underhill, who said he called Horne in July 2012.

It is not clear what the official at Southeast did with the information Lakeshia Ogletree said that she provided.

On July 10, 2012, Lakeshia Ogletree called Michelle Jimenez-Baserva, former secretary to Bowen, the former school district attorney. She said her daughter was six months pregnant and Williams was the father.

In an email dated July 11, 2012, at 2:39 p.m., Jimenez-Baserva informed Bowen and Horne of the call.

Less than 40 minutes later Horne sent an email to Martin, the assistant superintendent and former staff attorney, that read: “Please call me in regard to this matter. I am uncertain what if any next steps are.”

Through Derek Byrd, her attorney, Horne said she then conferred with Martin and he told her to interview the pregnant girl.

Horne called Shakura Ogletree and asked her four questions, including:

Q: “Do you know a Mr. Leverna Williams?”

A: “Yes I do, but he has nothing to do with me being pregnant.”

Q: “How do you know him?”

A: “I'm not talking about this anymore. Bye.”

Horne said that after she was hung up on, she notified Martin, who responded by saying nothing could be done because the girl was 18 and no longer a student.

Byrd said Horne did nothing wrong; she was simply following directives from Martin, her superior.

“Debbie Horne is not a cop, she doesn't conduct investigations on her own,” Byrd said. “She is a fact finder who reports to her superiors.”

“She relies on directions and it's not fair to her for not turning over more stones. She did exactly what she was told to do.”

“I don't know who to blame but it is not Debbie Horne.”

Confession and marriage

Were it not for a box of Pampers, perhaps the relationship never would have come to light.

Recently, Shakura Ogletree and her mother went to Bayshore High to confront Williams, alleging that he was shirking his financial responsibilities and money was needed for necessities such as diapers.

Shakura Ogletree, according to a report, also had been texting Williams, accusing him of seeing another student and that he had suggestive pictures of her on his computer.

Fearing Lakeshia Ogletree was going to expose the relationship to district officials, Williams beat her to the punch.

Williams went to Pumphrey himself and claimed Lakeshia Ogletree was blackmailing him.

Williams eventually told Pumphrey about the relationship, and confessed to being the father.

Pumphrey opened an investigation into the matter, interviewing Lakeshia and Shakura Ogletree in the presence of Moreland, the sheriff's detective.

While Shakura Ogletree acknowledged Thursday that her relationship with Williams was inappropriate, she criticized the school district for failing to look into concerns when they were actually happening.

“You didn't talk to him then, so why worry about it now?” Shakura Ogletree said. “If (the school district) is constantly having problems with this, then there is something they are doing wrong.”

Pumphrey concluded that Williams had violated two School Board policies by “exploiting a relationship with a student for personal gain or advantage” and “not making a reasonable effort to keep a student safe from physical or mental harm.”